


Off Script

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Basically Caleb Has All The Things, Caleb has PTSD, Character Study, Gen, Minor Spoilers for Episode 10 of Campaign 2, Warmage Caleb, autistic caleb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 18:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14025963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Caleb had always had a plan, the steps of his life as clear in his mind as the script of a play or the plot of one of his favorite books. He had bettered himself, learned things, broken free from the life of endless toil he had been born into, followed the rules, climbed the ranks. And then— then he had gone off script.Caleb thinks about the other members of this group he has fallen in with as he tries to sleep.





	Off Script

**Author's Note:**

> Last campaign I found myself identifying a lot with Vax. This campaign, every week I find something else I have in common with this ginger-haired depressed trash wizard. 
> 
> “I thought I was going to be something someday, a long time ago. And now I don’t.”
> 
> Liam, you are hurting my heart over here.
> 
> Here's hoping Caleb finds that lifeline and has the strength to grab it when it comes.

Caleb should be sleeping. He knows this. He is so far beyond exhausted that somehow he is too tired to sleep, which makes no sense but is true nonetheless. He is thankful that Nott isn’t here, that she chose to sleep with the other girls, because that means he doesn’t have to hold still so as not to disturb her. His fingers worry at the hem of the blanket covering him as his toes wiggle against the sheets, the textures comforting. His mind is spinning in frantic circles, like Frumpkin chasing his own tail. He wants his cat back, _needs_ his cat back, needs bright orange fur soft against his fingers and the soothing purr of him against his chest.

Caleb tries to calm his restless mind with a plan, with a list of things to do. In the morning he will wake up. He will get dressed. He will go downstairs and eat breakfast. He will go to the Invulnerable Vagrant. He will purchase at least twice what he needs to summon his familiar again, because he has the money to do that now. He will go back to the Leaky Tap and summon Frumpkin. After that he is not sure what the day will hold. He cannot plan his time as easily as he had once been able to, not with the addition of so many others, each with their own ideas and schedules and habits.

What Caleb had said to Fjord was true, he doesn’t trust any of them yet. _Them_ does not include Nott. Over the months Nott has become familiar, mostly predictable. She steals, yes, and she drinks, yes, but as long as she doesn’t get caught stealing, her routines don’t disturb his. Everyone else though, Caleb doesn’t know them well enough yet, hasn’t learned them yet, and the uncertainty of them irritates his brain and makes him itch.

Oddly enough, Yasha disturbs Caleb the least, even though she’s the one that Caleb barely knows at all. Perhaps it’s because that, except for Molly, no one else knows that much about her either, so at least, for once, Caleb is on equal footing. Maybe it’s because he sees in Yasha some of the same anxieties he himself has, and he’s noticed the way that, for all of her presence, she tries to make herself unobtrusive in social situations.

Beau and Jester, on the other hand, are a constant source of irritation, mostly because they are the ones who seem so focused on how he looks or dresses or even smells at any given time. He doesn’t like having attention drawn to him like that, but he can’t explain to them why he is the way he is now without giving away too much of himself. The clothes would be the easiest to explain, honestly. They are comfortable and worn the way he likes them, and his coat is as familiar to him as his own skin. Even if he purchased a new coat identical to his old one, it would _feel_ wrong until it was broken in, and the wrongness of it would drive him to distraction.

The reason he doesn’t bathe as often as others seems to think he should, well, there are layers to that. Some days the sensation of water against his skin is just too much to bear. It hadn’t always been that way, hadn’t always been so bad, but after _fire smoke death screaming screaming screaming_ everything that had once been perhaps a minor irritation seemed to have become that much worse. No one looking for him now, no one who would have once known him, would recognize him under the layers of dirt. He had taken pains to be clean once, the military had required it. The military and their rules and their orders, the way things had to be done, the chain of command. Rules and orders were comforting. Until they weren’t. Until they were wrong. Until _smoke in his lungs and everything is ash and his hands are black he did this he did this he—_

Caleb’s hands twist in the sheets as he tries not to choke on memories. He takes a shaky breath, holds it, counts out seconds in his head, releases the breath, repeats. He counts out breaths, counts the beats of his own heart, the numbers calming, soothing. Numbers have order. Numbers make sense.

Molly makes sense. That had surprised Caleb when he realized that. He doesn’t _trust_ Molly, but he feels like maybe he _could_ , at some point in the future, some point Caleb can’t imagine because he learned the hard way to never think ahead so far. Molly seems to have a code he lives by, some internal logic, and that makes him more predictable than the others. Molly lies, Caleb is sure, but he never seems to lie about anything important, anything that would put them in danger. The tiefling’s words are half patter and half patterns, and Caleb is very good with patterns. He might be able to learn Molly, given time.

Fjord though. Caleb doesn’t trust Fjord. The man is too good at hiding behind his false faces, at speaking with different voices. The saying is that you can’t con a con man, and Caleb is sure that Fjord is playing the long game with the group, to what end he is not sure. And yet, Caleb had given Fjord a truth, earlier, and he’s still not sure why. He hadn’t meant to say it, but it had come into his mind and out of his mouth like his thoughts sometimes did, bypassing all of his mental gatekeepers.

_“I thought I was going to be something someday, a long time ago. And now I don’t.”_

And that was the problem. Caleb had always had a plan, the steps of his life as clear in his mind as the script of a play or the plot of one of his favorite books. He had bettered himself, learned things, broken free from the life of endless toil he had been born into, followed the rules, climbed the ranks. And then— then he had gone off script. He had gone from almost being Something to being Nothing, just a broken man drowning in an uncertain present and an even more uncertain future, trying to find the narrative thread of his life so that maybe he could pull himself back into a world of certainty, where things made sense.

Maybe that was why he had told Fjord that one truth. Fjord, who had been just a normal sailor one moment, then had been tossed out of the ocean and up onto the beach with magic in his blood and a sword that dripped saltwater. Caleb believes that much of what Fjord has said, had heard in Fjord’s voice the uncertainty that came with knowing your life was going to go one way, until the day it did not. And now he had promised the man the story of his checkered past with flame.

Caleb sighs and closes his eyes. He has a few days to come up with something, and a lot can happen in a few days. Maybe Fjord will forget, or something else will come up. Hells, maybe Caleb will be dead, that seems to keep almost happening to him. He’s starting to think he might care if he dies, and he’s not sure how he feels about that at all. Instead of thinking about his feelings, he starts rehearsing what he’s going to tell Fjord, building himself a script to read from.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm angel-ascending over on Tumblr if you want to stop by and say hi!


End file.
